


and forget that we'd ever met

by Jocondite (jocondite)



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-21
Updated: 2007-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-10 03:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jocondite/pseuds/Jocondite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another dimension, this is exactly what's happening/I like the idea of different theres and elsewheres. (Jon happens to three people, in different ways).</p>
            </blockquote>





	and forget that we'd ever met

"In another dimension this is exactly what's happening,  
I like the idea of different theres and elsewheres.

…Here, when I say "I never want to be without you,"  
somewhere else I am saying,  
"I never want to be without you again." 

And when I touch you  
in each of the places we meet

in all of the lives we are,   
it's with hands that are dying   
and resurrected."

 

**I.  
dance hall hips…**

"Where's Ryan?" Jon asks, leaning over and tickling Spencer's cheek with a blade of grass. Spencer smiles and turns his head. They're sitting on the lawn near where the buses have parked for the night; it's past midnight and the sounds of partying spill out from the Academy's bus, raucous and intermittent. The other bus is dark and silent.

"On our bus. He was curled up in his bunk, texting his girlfriend, last time I checked."

"Is he pissed," Jon asks carefully, "about Brendon and the," pause, "the drinking?"

He feels a little guilty about that. It's not like they pinched Brendon's nose and forced the beer down his throat – Brendon's not really ready for the hard spirits yet – but after a couple of the TAI party nights he'd been uncomfortably aware of the slight chill in the Panic camp, the looks Brendon gave Ryan and Ryan gave Brendon. William hadn't noticed; William never did.

"He's not _pissed_," Spencer sighs, "it's just. It's just awkward, that's all. They'll get over it."

"Huh," Jon says, and then, "That's good, I guess. I mean, I'm glad." It feels kind of awkward to be holding his nearly empty beer bottle right now, still; he shifts it awkwardly from one hand to another, but succeeds only in drawing Spencer's eye to it.

"Um."

Spencer snorts. "Dude, I don't _care_, I promise."

"Okay," Jon says, but he doesn't drink it anyway. "I'm happy, you know? I'm happy that you guys came on this tour with us, even if you're stealing our – their, The Academy's – thunder a little bit. I'm _happy_, Spencer Smith," he says again, rubbing his forehead affectionately against Spencer's shoulder.

"Tour's nearly over. I didn't think we were going to be here," Spencer says quietly, and Jon says, "I _know_. You should be proud that you are, Spence, really. I mean, it totally sucked, that going down, but you're – you're probably going to be stronger as a band now, dude, right?" He squeezes his shoulder.

"I guess," Spencer says, wrapping his arms around his knees. "We've been friends since forever, it just – it just kind of sucks that he's not taking our calls anymore. My calls. Since we were _kids_, it's just- I mean, I'm not mad at him for leaving the band anymore, though the way he did it, just leaving us with a tour and no – but still, I just. You can't throw all that away, right?"

"No," Jon agrees, then points out, "and you had Jack," and Spencer sighs, because it's true, they had Jack.

Jack Marin had signed on as their manager for the tour, and ended up on stage playing bass when Brent had split five shows in, sick of the pace and the life, missing his girlfriend, his family.

Jon had liked Brent, really, but it had felt like a cloud lifting, once the initial furor had died down. The last gig he'd played had been in Providence, at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, of all places; and then Jon was being woken up the next morning by a frantic banging on the door of their bus, Siska blearily opening the door to find Ryan Ross still in his pyjama bottoms, hands curled into fists, something lost in his eyes. _He just booked a ticket,_ he'd said a little wildly, _he just booked it, he left._

"You've done it, Spencer Smith," Jon told him, leaning in and resting his forehead against Spencer's. "You're tiny and young and so little, and you've done it."

"Hey, I'm eighteen," Spencer points out, "eighteen, I'm totally not jailbait," and the fine skin of his throat is the color of milk, pale even in the dark.

Jon swallows. There's a sudden rise in the level of the distant party noise that's been flickering in the background, a chorus of whoops and cheers, and Jon can pick out William's laughter high above the rest. From the tolerant look on Spencer's face, eyebrows slightly raised, Jon imagines that he can hear Brendon.

He tilts his head and finishes off the last of his beer, setting the empty bottle carefully down on the ground. It falls over, and Spencer giggles, close by his ear. Jon's suddenly very aware that they're sitting close together in the grass, and that he's very slightly drunk, and that Spencer is breathing softly against his neck. He tickles Spencer's cheek with the blade of grass again.

"Jon," Spencer says, "Jon, this is nearly all over," and then he leans in the rest of the short distance and brushes their lips together. Jon lets him, because it's summer and the air is balmy and he can feel grass tickling under his feet. His flip-flops lie abandoned a few feet away.

"I thought you didn't like alcohol," he says into the heated curve of Spencer's throat.

Spencer laughs, sitting back. "Not to _drink_, dumbass. Doesn't mean that I'm not going to kiss you." He starts to pull daisies from the lawn, culling them carefully. Most of them are sealed up tight, petals closed during the dark hours.

"What are you doing?" Jon asks, and smiles sleepily when Spencer reaches up and tucks a half-open daisy behind his ear.

"I don't actually know," he admits, eyelashes brushing the tops of his cheeks; and that's so endearing that Jon says "Spencer, _hey_."

"What?"

When Jon just says _Spencer_ again and slides his hand over the curve of his neck, thumb brushing over the skin just under his jaw, Spencer makes a small sweet sound low in his throat and kisses him back. It's longer, this time, slow and sweet and only faintly wet, and somehow Jon's hands find his hips, close. Spencer changes the angle of the kiss; it gets suddenly deeper and wetter and hotter, and Jon kisses him harder.

They rock together, and Spencer gasps into his mouth; Jon likes that noise, quiet and half-muffled, so he tighten his hands on Spencer's hips, only loosening his grip when Spencer wriggles, says "No, wait." He's briefly cold again at the lost of physical contact before Spencer's crawling into his lap and leaning in to kiss him again.

His hair is soft under Jon's fingers, long, brushing against his collar; the stars wheel slightly in the sky until finally Jon's lying on his back in the grass, Spencer' a warm weight on top of him.

"We should," Jon says, and stops. He doesn't know what they should do. His head feels fuzzy, like it's full of fireflies. Maybe they're in his stomach, too; every place where Spencer's skin touches his, he feels oversensitive, coldwarm prickling.

"What are you doing after this?" Spencer asks, tilting his head, _conversational_, and Jon shrugs.

"I'm going back to Chicago," he says, "After Truckstops finishes. I mean, I'll still come and hang out with them on tour sometimes, but I have a degree to finish. Columbia," he sighs as Spencer's fingers trail over his stomach, the strip of skin above his jeans where his shirt rides up, and he finds himself telling Spencer about the things he misses about college, about the girl who is, was nearly, will be his girlfriend one day, about his cat, about the internship opportunities they offer to second year film students next summer, which one he really, truly, secretly wants to get.

"Mmmhmm." Spencer listens well, but as Jon watches he crosses his arms, hands chafing his biceps, and Jon says, "Are you cold?"

"Not really," Spencer says, but he lets Jon take his hand, slip his fingers through his, and he can feel the drumstick calluses on Spencer's fingers and palms, faint but present.

"Do you want to go inside?" he asks, tugging on Spencer's hand, and Spencer smiles faintly at him, reaching over and pulling the daisy out of his hair with his free hand.

"No, let's stay out here a while," he says, and they do, until the sky starts to lighten, until Tom comes out reeling off the Academy's bus, half naked and clutching a bottle of whiskey. "Jonny," he calls out, "Joooooonny."

"Here," Jon calls back, lifting his voice. Spencer's fingers are still curled and hot around his.

"Jonny," Tom says, drunkenly delighted, and changes direction, finally throwing himself down beside them in the long grass. He proffers the bottle to Jon, "Present."

Jon nods companionably and tips his head back, drinks; warmth at the back of his throat, sliding down his gullet, warmth in his stomach, killing the fireflies. He leans over to kiss Spencer with it still burning on his tongue.

"Dude," Tom says, and "Shut up," Jon replies mildly. Tom does. Spencer hums a snatch of something, a soft formless tune Jon can't place.

The night air is warm, it's nearly summer, and Jon thinks, says, "This is going to be over soon."

Lying back, Spencer's head pillowed on Jon's chest, a solid weight pinning him to the earth every time he draws air; Jon brushes the silky hair off his forehead, soft under his fingers, and smiles down at him. Spencer shifts a little, stretching his legs out straight. "I think, I think we're going to headline, our next tour. _Headline._ We're talking about – it's looking like the U.K, next, Europe, can you _even_." He stares up at the sky. "Can you _even_."

"Touring," Tom sighs, "us too, touring and more touring," pulling the cigarette out from behind his ear; there's a flicker of bright as he lights it. He draws deep and exhales heavily, sighing again.

There's a faint lull as Tom smokes and as Spencer closes his eyes under the ministrations of Jon's fingers, a soft silence drawing on and out until Jon says comfortably, "And I'm going home to my cat."

 

**II.  
…pretentious quips…**

Jon never quite gets over the way the kids sing the words back to them, even after what feels like three or four years of straight touring. They sing along to every word from the new album; Mikey Russell belts out _The Things I Won't Say (So Read My Goddamn Lips_), to loud cheers. There's a reason it was in the top ten for three weeks straight.

Then, because they like to mix up the setlist a bit, Jon has to concentrate on the bassline for _A Friday Night in D Major_, and, after that, an even older song off the first, unofficial album (the one Jon didn't play on); the new fans go quiet and the old timers hold up their cellphones and sway.

Vegas kids are as clamorous as everywhere else, so they sign stuff afterwards like usual; Mikey, with a hasty, formless scrawl (Jon knows he can't wait to just get back onto the bus), Tom, nearly as brusquely. Nick tends to chat more with the kids, and so does Jon. He gets in trouble for it sometimes, but it's not like he's going to be rude when they're all so enthusiastic and smiling and just, so _happy_. It's awesome.

"Hey, Jon," a kid near his elbow says, and Jon turns and smiles at him. "Could you," pushing a t-shirt at him, and Jon says, "No, yeah, of course, man, what's your name?"

He does kinda wish that he hadn't let Nick talk him into putting screen prints of Dylan's face onto one of the latest merch lines. The merch designs are Nick's thing, he's not going to interfere, but – it's weird. He really, _really_ shouldn't have let Nick and Tom talk him into giving Dylan a cameo on their latest video.

"Ryan," the kid says, his voice surprisingly deep for someone so slender, and Jon smiles at him again – cute kid, big dark eyes and artfully styled scene bangs – and signs it, just over the ear of one of the Dylans.

"I- I really like your band," the kid – Ryan – says, quick and kind of intense. "You guys are amazing, I really - I listen to your albums all the time."

"Yeah?" Jon smiles, handing him back his shirt and signing the sneaker someone thrusts at him. He should probably be telling him to move off now that he's had his turn, but Jon's really bad at this sort of thing.

"_Yeah,_" Ryan nods, looking down and biting his lip. "I really think that the way you play the bass, so close to the bridge – it's, it's incredible, man."

He's totally flirting with him, kind of ineptly, and Jon can't help it, he's kind of precious, so he smiles a third time and grasps the kid's thin forearm.

"Thanks," he says sincerely, and the kid visibly glows. Then their bodyguard takes control of the signing, mustering the milling fans into some sort of order, and Jon loses sight of him in the crowd.

After they get away from there, Nick suggests that they explore the Strip; yeah, it's late and they've just played a gig, but hey, they're in _Vegas_, right? Mikey and Tom readily see the logic in this, so Jon finds himself in several strip clubs, bars, and a proper casino or two; after a couple of hours, his head's starting to spin and he could seriously use some air, so he ducks out of Caesar's and leans against the wall near the entrance, breathing.

"Jon?" someone asks quietly, and he blinks.

"Yeah?"

The kid melts out of the shadows like a ninja, and stands there hopefully. Jon stares at him for a few seconds before he realizes, hey, he knows that face. "Ryan, right?"

He feels kind of proud, pulling the name from the recesses of his mind like that, and he's rewarded by the kid beaming, ear-to-ear, then ducking his head like he's afraid to show how pleased he is.

"Isn't it a little late out for you, kid?"

The kid blinks, and then the corner of his mouth turns up. "I'm _twenty_, man."

Jon's not entirely sure he believes this, but he's also not entirely sure that he knows the way back to their hotel from here; luckily, the kid turns out to be a Vegas native, and leads him back to familiarity, talking in his low, hoarse voice about music – it turns out that he plays guitar – and peppering his conversation with quotes from Oscar Wilde. It's actually pretty cool.

"Oh, hey," Jon interrupts him, feeling relieved – "that's our bus, there, parked in the lot. Dude, you're a pretty decent guide."

"Yeah?" Ryan asks, eyeing its dark hulking mass with what Jon recognizes as awe. "That's like, where you guys live, on the road?"

"Yeah," Jon agrees – seriously, it's just a bus, a stinky, cramped bus full of too many guys – and adds, "I can give you the grand tour, if you want."

Ryan nods, wide-eyed, and Jon grins back at him. That's one of the things he loves about his – god, his _job_ – apart from, obviously, the music and being in a band with some of his best friends - he gets to make people so happy, sometimes, with the simplest things.

"What about the others?" Ryan whispers, and Jon laughs.

"Don't worry about them, they've all got rooms in the hotel. So do I, I'm supposed to be rooming with Tom, but, you know. Tour. Okay." He fumbles at his keychain, clipped through the beltloop of his jeans, and finally, finally the bus door creaks open.

"Okay," he repeats, and leads Ryan through. ("This is the front lounge. It's where all the magic happens. This is the kitchen - the fridge, it's very important, a very valued member of our team. This is the scorch mark where Scimeca was trying to make toast. He's not allowed anymore. This is – oh, this is our tv, check it out. Plasma. Last tour, we didn't qualify for plasma. We're moving up in the world. And this way, the bunks.")

Ryan follows him around like a puppy, wide-eyed, and Jon feels proprietarily proud. He watches the kid take in the cramped space of the curtained bunks, and bite his lip. "They can't be very comfortable," he says, low.

Jon shrugs. "They're not, really. The lounges are better for hanging out in," and Ryan nods back, a tiny chin movement, and follows Jon through into the back lounge.

"We hang out here, mostly," Jon tells him, "video games and stuff," and Ryan eyes the couches like they're cast out of solid gold, hallowed merely by Jon and his band using them. The kid is really kind of adorable.

"Well, you've seen it all."

"Yeah," Ryan agrees, "I have," and then he starts pulling his shirt off, over his head; it drops to the ground soundlessly. He's almost painfully thin, pale-skinned with lean, strong arms, and hipbones like blades.

"Hey," Ryan says, in his hoarse, broken voice, suddenly right up close; he leans in to nuzzle wetly at Jon's neck, hand working on his crotch. Jon swallows, paralyzed (the guy is groping his _dick_, through his jeans, and he's still half-hard from the show, the buzz from drinking), and once he can move, make his legs work, he jerks the hell back.

"Dude, what? I just wanted – I just wanted to show you the tour bus, I wasn't – this wasn't," and the kid freezes and stops groping him.

He says quietly, "Oh," huge eyed; and as Jon watches he starts to turn a horrible mottled crimson, color smearing across the arch of his cheekbones and flushing down his bare, pale chest.

Jon feels horrible. He feels like he just dropkicked someone's precious new baby puppy, or shut Dylan's tail in the door, or sat down on someone's lovingly hand-crafted diorama with a sickening crunch.

"Not – I'm just not that guy," he explains hurriedly, as Ryan stumbles back, fumbling for his abandoned shirt. "It's not that I don't – it's not that you're n- Look, Ryan, it's just. I'm really, _really_ not the skanky guy in a band who takes groupies back to his bus to bang, I swear. I don't want – you thought I was that guy, and I'm really not."

"Okay," Ryan mutters, pulling the shirt over his head, _ribs collarbone hips_ vanishing under the swathe of fabric. It doesn't make Jon feel any better to see that the t-shirt says _5ive (0h-4our-9lan)_, which he thought was a lame joke when they first put those shirts out, what, two years ago, a merch line long since discontinued.

"I really didn't have – there were no shady ulterior motives behind me asking you back here," he rambles on, because seriously, he feels like a heel.

"Yeah, okay," Ryan snaps, lifting his head to glare at him, "you don't have to keep telling me, I get it. You're not into me, okay, point made."

"Oh, hey," Jon says, reaching out and grabbing his wrists, holding tight even when Ryan twists them in the circle of his grip. "Wait, what? No, come on, now. I really, really didn't mean to offend you, dude. Ryan. That's the last thing I want to do," he promises, voice going softer.

"I'm so fucking embarrassed," Ryan says finally, flatly, and Jon laughs quietly.

"We've all been there, I promise," he assures him, "I don't think any less of you."

"What, you'll still respect me in the morning?" Ryan asks, still snippy, and Jon grins. He likes the kid; he's scrappy, and tough, and he comes out swinging.

"Yeah, that too." Another grin, and he keeps it up until Ryan starts to smile back at him; Jon finally loosens his grasp on his wrists. "I think it's technically morning now, anyway."

Ryan looks at his feet.

Jon tugs on his hand, and says, "So, I'm really not the skanky band guy who tries to get off after shows with groupies on the bus."

"…yeah," Ryan says. "So? We've already established that."

"_So_," Jon sighs heavily, "_so_, what I want to know is, is there a diner near here that's open all night? Also, I'd like to see some age ID," he adds hastily. "The real deal."

It's fun, strangely warming, to watch as Ryan's expression alters from pissed-off confusion into a slowly dawning smile starting at the corners of his mouth; it twists slightly when Jon makes his comment about ID, but it's definitely still a genuine smile.

"I am actually twenty," Ryan says, rolling his eyes, "born in 1986, and everything. Nearly twenty-_one._"

"Diner," Jon prompts him.

"Huh? Yeah, of course there'll be one, it's Vegas. Is this –" He hesitates, then says softly, "I just don't want to get the wrong idea again."

"No, it's totally a date," Jon says. "Are you slow, or somethi-"

Ryan kisses him, harder than before and with a faint hint of teeth; Jon kisses back long enough for politeness (well. Maybe slightly longer than politeness requires), then pushes him gently back. "I don't put out without at least coffee first," he reminds him, and Ryan chokes on a laugh, making a helpless strangled sound into his shoulder, and Jon chuckles in counterpoint.

 

**III.  
…a boxer's bob-and-weave**

 

The girl filing her nails at the front desk has china blue eyes as large as dinner-plates; and when Jon walks in, they get wider still. "Holy shit," she says, "holy _shit_, oh, baby, are we going to take care of you."

Jon scratches at the shaggy beard on his chin, and then flicks his hair, which now grazes his shoulders, out of his eyes. Everybody experiments with facial hair in college, it's like a rite of passage. The way the girl and the phalanx of hairdressers ministering to the shorn over by the row of mirrors – fuck, even the customers – turn and stare seems to imply that they haven't heard of this crucial part of the male campus experience, though.

"I hope so," he says. He makes sure to widen his eyes to appropriately beseeching proportions when he asks her if anyone's free, because he's found that helps.

"Hmm," she says, tapping her pen against her perfect chin, and then grins up at him, exposing all her shining white teeth. Jon smiles back politely, because his mother raised him well, even if that grin looked kind of scary. "Brendon's free," she says, "he's just finishing up, he'll be with you in ten, okay? You just sit tight over there, and I'll send the kid right over to you when he's done."

"Okay," Jon agrees meekly, sitting on the stool she points him to, and whiles the wait away with Spin and Blender. He has awesome taste in hair salons, even if he can hear the hairdressers whispering to each other.

He's mildly engrossed in an article on Saddle Creek when someone clears their throat right next to his shoulder, and he looks up to see the hairdresser – Brendon, the name tag pinned to his chest helpfully re-affirms, in case Jon had forgotten it – staring at him, mouth fallen slightly open.

"Dude," he says, "_dude_," and then mutters, "what the fuck, did I not kiss her ass enough this month? Why do I get the hermit?"

Jon stares back. Brendon is camp as camp can be; tight pink t-shirt clinging to his chest and stomach, stretched over his shoulders; red emo frames perched on the bridge of his nose; extremely tight jeans and glittery silver sneakers – seriously, silver. Seriously, _glitter_. There's a rubber lavender bracelet around his wrist, and Jon bites his lip when he realizes that the guy – Brendon – is distractedly humming 'A Whole New World.'

"Are you for real?" Jon asks, he can't even help it, and Brendon looks back at him, eying him up and down with a dismissive flick of his eyes and a twist of his full mouth.

"Dude, I'm totally not paid enough to pretend that I take sartorial advice from guys with hair as traumatized as yours, okay?"

"Fair enough," Jon says, nodding, and then, "I'm sorry, that was rude of me."

"It was," Brendon agrees, "but you're cute, so I forgive you, and I won't even accidentally nick off the tip of your ear while I'm fixing that mess, how's that for a deal?"

"Urie," says the huge-eyed brunette on the front desk sweetly, "shut the fuck up and stop menacing the customers, or I'll shunt him off onto Chris - but I swear, Urie totally hardly ever accidentally maims anyone anymore," she tells Jon, smiling and snapping her gum.

"Yeah, nowadays it's usually on purpose," Brendon says, grinning, "I've developed _technique._"

"Um," Jon says, but when Brendon jerks his head impatiently, he follows him through to the back room to get his hair washed anyway.

Brendon settles him in the tipped-back chair and turns the water on. It's gentle, blood-warm against Jon's scalp, and he closes his eyes, lulled into bonelessness by its heat and soft pressure.

"So, mountain man," Brendon asks, his hands sure and gentle in Jon's hair as he starts to massage shampoo through its tangles, "what triggered the migration down from the hills? Is this a once-every-ten-years kind of deal?"

"I live three blocks away," Jon tells him placidly, "it's quite a trek."

"You're at Columbia?" Brendon asks, and his fingers dig into just the right places on Jon's skull, and he has to exert great effort not to moan aloud.

"I am," he agrees, "film," and Brendon mutters something that might be an impugnation of the pretentious facial hair of arts students, but Jon can't really hear it over the running water and he's prepared to let it slide.

"Home-grown or born and raised?" he asks, louder, and he's clearly one of those hairdressers that need to keep a conversation going at all times, but Jon can forgive him anything for that thing he does with his thumbs.

"Home-grown, the real thing."

"No shit? I'm from Vegas, myself," Brendon tells him, and wiggles his eyebrows. "And no, before you start on the stripper or card shark jokes – trust me, I've heard them all – I was a _good_ little Vegasian. Mormon, even. I sang in the church choir."

"You made that word up," Jon accuses, and Brendon laughs, turning the water off, and says "Yeah, but the choir shit's totally for real – sit up, dude, time to move on out."

Jon whimpers at the loss of touch and water both, but sits up obediently.

Brendon squints at him, shaking his head and sighing as he gives him the once-over. "I don't even know where to begin with you, seriously."

"That receptionist must really have it in for you," Jon says sympathetically.

"Receptionist?" Brendon laughs. "That's _Eliza_, she freaking runs this whole show. She's the bosswoman, and we're all her quaking, hired little minions. She's the maestro." He leans in, voice going low and hushed, intimate, "There is _nothing_ she can't do with a razor, I swear to god," and laughs when Jon flushes. "Anyway, she totally loves me, don't you, baby?" he calls out, twisting his head to shout over his shoulder.

"Like burning," Eliza shouts back, "exactly like it," but although her laughter is intemperately loud, Jon can pick up on the fondness threaded through it now.

"She rules us with her iron fist," Brendon whispers, face screwing up into an exaggerated contortion of fear as he hustles Jon through into the main room, ushering him into a chair in front of the mirrors. (Jon ignores the resumption of all the interested stares. Maybe he let the beard run just a little too wild, it's starting to look like a distinct possibility). "No, she honestly loves me, we're totally going to get married and pool our My Little Pony collections. I'm going to marry into the business, it's going to be awesome."

"Married," Jon says carefully, and Brendon guffaws and rolls his eyes.

"Not _really_, Jonathan Walker, jeez, don't be so gullible."

"You know my name."

"I peeked in the appointment book. Mad espionage skills, you don't even know." He squints at Jon again, sucking his full lower lip in between his teeth as he appears to think, and then drapes a swathe of cloth over Jon's front, tucking it into his shirt collar. His fingers are deft and warm. "So, where do we begin?"

"I was thinking," Jon says, "that I'd keep the beard," and Brendon shakes his head.

"Uh-uh, no. That's going if I have to _burn_ it off with bitumen, and don't think I won't go that far, because I totally will."

"Okay," Jon says meekly, and when Brendon takes the razor in hand, he stretches his neck back, holding very still and staying very silent as Brendon scrapes it over the soft skin under his chin, the sides of his jaw, The razor moves very carefully and precisely over his chin and upper lip, delicately around the shape of his mouth, and Brendon frowns in concentration the whole time, lower lip vanished between his teeth. Jon's never had a professional shave before, and when Brendon finishes up, massaging lotion into his skin, he reaches a hand up to touch his chin and is shocked at the unfamiliar silk of it.

"Hey," Brendon says, standing back and sounding genuinely surprised, "what have we here? I think there was actually a pretty fucking hot guy buried under all that hair, jesus. You were keeping that one on the down low."

"You said I was cute before."

"I lied," Brendon tells him breezily. "I'm paid just enough to tell customers that they're pretty."

Jon pouts at him, and Brendon grins and tugs on the damp ends of his long hair. "So, what are we doing with this? You look kinda good with it long, you know, now that the dead animal you had pasted to your face has hightailed it."

Jon shakes his head sadly. "It has to go," he says, "-not all of it, I mean, don't shave it off, but it has to be a respectable length. Like, something my grandma wouldn't take objection to."

Brendon whistles through his teeth. "Grandma, huh."

"Grandma standards. Family wedding."

"Ouch, dude, I feel you," Brendon tells him, industriously pinning sections of Jon's shaggy hair out of the way with day-glo hair grips, in brilliant pinks and yellows and greens.

"They're a lesson to you," he tells Jon when Jon opens his mouth, "a reminder never to turn into the wild man of the hills again. If I have to sear that onto your _soul_ with day-glo shame, I'm going to. You can't be allowed to deface your – your pretty _face_ again, not on my watch. It's desecration."

He grins at Jon in the mirror, around the pink clawgrip he's holding between his teeth. Jon grins back, although he makes mournful claim that: "You've stripped me of my dignity."

"Tough shit," Brendon says, muffled, and pulls out the clip to pin up another section. "I told you, desperate measures."

"So," Jon says, as Brendon starts to wield the shears, "what happened after Vegas?"

Chicago ("I just didn't feel like going back to Vegas once I was all done, you know? I was out, I wasn't going back, it didn't fit me anymore and this seemed as good a place as any,") by way of hairdressing school in Arizona, apparently.

"Is that where you realized you were g– sorry, I'm prying," Jon says, looking down at his lap, and then back up into the glass.

Brendon laughs. "Huh. Shit, it's that obvious?" He looks down at himself, the tops of his glittery sneakers (his shoelaces are patterned with tiny pink and red hearts), and then grins. "Yeah, okay, I'll give you that, but hey, dude, for all you know, I could just be working the ironic hipster thing, seriously."

Jon's a polite guy. "Sure."

"Shut the fuck up," Brendon says; he's still laughing, but Jon holds very still as the silver shears glint close to his ear, relaxing only when Brendon puts them down to draw a comb through his hair, measuring up the evenness of the ends. "And yeah, kinda, that was it. I always kind of knew, but I didn't _know_, you know? The church, and everything." He shrugs, clipping. "Tons of guys don't have a girlfriend in high school, I just figured that I was, like, the one teenage guy who actually meant it when he said he was waiting for the right girl – if that lip twitch turns into an actual laugh, Walker, I'm totally giving you hot pink highlights, don't think I won't."

"Sorry," Jon says, biting his lip, and Brendon's eyes are warm, mirthful, when they meet his in the mirror.

"You suck," he says affably, "I was _innocent_, okay? Sheltered, even. Well, comparably." He hums a little as he trims, low in his throat; this time, Jon doesn't recognize the tune. "Then came hairdressing school, and, you know, the scales fell from my eyes, all that jazz. Good times."

Jon doesn't mean to ask, but it comes out anyway, tentative. "Do your parents know?"

"No," he says, and then amends it, "not really. I mean, I haven't told them and they haven't asked. If they did, I don't even – _shit_," Brendon says, stopping, shifting his grip on the scissors slightly. He reaches forward and brushes a lock of cut hair from the curve of Jon's neck; his fingers are still warm. "It's fucked up, just like everyone else's life, _the end_. Jesus, Jon Walker, how the fuck did you even get me talking about this? I swear to god, you have like, magic Buddha powers. Can I rub your belly for luck?"

"I like listening," Jon says mildly, "and no."

"I'll totally buy you a cup of coffee," Brendon wheedles, "dulce de leche with, like, _extra shots._"

"You found out my secret weakness," Jon laughs, holding his hands palm up, "although I'm more of a macchiato kind of guy."

"I – really?" Brendon asks, "I can buy you coffee?" and it's crazy, Jon's never seen someone's face light up like that, every feature working together to create a perfect likeness of unguarded delight. Or, he has; but only on very small children who haven't learnt yet to play their cards closer to their chest, to distrust. Something about his smile makes something twinge in Jon's chest, winding tight, wrapping around his ventricles.

"Um," he says, and it's almost like magic, like an animated cartoon; as he watches, the grin fades, dimming by degrees, and Brendon manages to school his face into something more impassive. It seems even worse than the brilliance of its open over-brightness.

Brendon bends his head and fusses over the line of Jon's hair where it hits his neck, evening it out. "It's okay," he mutters, "I didn't mean it like – I was just, it was just fucking coffee."

Brendon's hands are brushing hair off his shoulders, quick flurried patting, and Jon reaches back, up, and grabs one of them, fingers curling around Brendon's wrist as its owner goes still. "Hey," he says easily, and tries not to overthink this; "don't dash my hopes, dude, that's just plain cruel. _Just coffee_, jesus."

"What?"

"When's your break?"

"_What_?" Brendon repeats, and then shakes his head, "um, after my next slot, I have about an hour and a half, if you – if you."

Jon nods, "Yeah, that sounds – I'll wait," he promises, and looks up to catch Brendon's eyes in the mirror.

Brendon beams at him. "Your hair's all done," he says, after a minute, "just, FYI," and Jon nods again, swallows. Doesn't look away even to check it out, even for the quick flick of his eyes that it would take. Brendon squeezes his hand, bouncing slightly on the thick rubber soles of his sneakers, and Jon squeezes back.


End file.
